This article is an attempt to have fun with Amazon Translate, and is not intended to be taken as any sort of serious review.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) includes a machine translation service called Amazon Translate:
“Amazon Translate is a neural machine translation service that delivers fast, high-quality, and affordable language translation. Neural machine translation is a form of language translation automation that uses deep learning models to deliver more accurate and more natural sounding translation than traditional statistical and rule-based translation algorithms. Amazon Translate allows you to localize content – such as websites and applications – for international users, and to easily translate large volumes of text efficiently.” — Amazon Translate homepage
Sounds pretty cool. If you log into the AWS Console and select the Amazon Translate service, it gives you an interface where you can easily play with it:
If we hit the “Swap languages” button, this translates the result back to the original language. In this really simple case, it matches perfectly:
However, this is not always the case. Translating back and forth will often result in things being “lost in translation”, for various reasons ranging from context to linguistic differences.
Since we all know machine translation isn’t perfect, I could not resist being a complete bastard and testing AWS Translate against none other than… How much wood would a woodchuck chuck:
Translating back and forth for each of the supported languages yields some interesting and often hilarious results before the translation converges (translating back and forth starts giving you the same thing every time). Let’s take a look at the results of this little experiment.
English <-> German
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Wie viel Holz würde ein Holzfutter, wenn ein Holzfutter Holz abwerfen könnte?
- How much wood would a wood fodder if a wood fodder could drop wood?
- Wie viel Holz würde ein Holzfutter, wenn ein Holzfutter Holz fallen könnte?
- How much wood would a wood lining if a wood lining could fall wood?
- Wie viel Holz würde eine Holzverkleidung, wenn eine Holzverkleidung Holz fallen könnte?
- How much wood would a wood panelling if a wood paneling could fall wood?
It’s easy to see how, as we translate back and forth, we not only lose the sense of the original question (if it ever had any), but the result also makes no grammatical sense. However, what really catches my eye is the two different spellings of “panelling”/”paneling” in the same phrase.
English <-> French
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Combien de bois un mandrin de bois serait-il un mandrin de bois si un mandrin de bois pouvait mander du bois ?
- How much wood would a wood mandrel be a wood mandrel if a wood mandrel could mandrel wood?
- Combien de bois un mandrin de bois serait-il un mandrin de bois si un mandrin de bois pouvait mandrin de bois ?
- How much wood would a wood chuck be a wood chuck if a wood chuck could wood chuck?
What’s really interesting about this one is that after going on a nice big detour (becoming a “wood mandrel”), the English phrase eventually returns to something relatively close to the original (even if still wrong).
English <-> Portuguese
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Quanta madeira uma marmota manteria se uma marmota pudesse atirar madeira?
- How much wood would a groundhog keep if a groundhog could throw wood?
This one’s pretty good – it got the animal right. The only mistake is on the first translation of “chuck” becoming “keep” – you’ll notice that all other translations also interpret the different “chuck”s differently.
English <-> Spanish
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- ¿Cuánta madera haría un Woodchuck si un Woodchuck pudiera tirar madera?
- How much wood would a Woodchuck make if a Woodchuck could throw wood?
- ¿Cuánta madera ganaría un Woodchuck si un Woodchuck pudiera tirar madera?
- How much wood would a Woodchuck gain if a Woodchuck could throw wood?
The Spanish Mr. Woodchuck is a businessman, apparently.
English <-> Arabic
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- كم من الخشب يمكن أن تشوك الخشب إذا كان الخشب يمكن أن يرمي الخشب؟
- How much wood can a wood fork if the wood can throw wood?
- كم الخشب يمكن شوكة الخشب إذا الخشب يمكن رمي الخشب؟
- How much wood can a wood fork if wood can throw wood?
Okay, this is starting to get pretty weird.
English <-> Chinese
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- 如果木头可以木头卡住木头,木头卡住多少木头?
- If wood can be stuck in wood, how many wood is stuck?
- 如果木头可以被卡在木头上,有多少木头被卡住?
- If wood can be stuck on wood, how many wood is stuck?
- 如果木头可以卡在木头上,有多少木头被卡住?
- If the wood can be stuck on the wood, how many wood is stuck?
Uhhh…
English <-> Japanese
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- ウッドチャックが木材をチャックできるなら、どのくらいの木材をチャックしますか?
- If a Woodchuck can chuck wood, how much wood would you chuck?
- もしウッドチャックが木材をチャックできるなら、どのくらいの木材をチャックしますか?
- If the wood chuck can chuck wood, how much wood would you chuck?
- 木材チャックが木材をチャックできるなら、どれくらいの木材をチャックしますか?
- If a wood chuck can chuck wood, how much wood do you chuck?
- 木材チャックが木材をチャックできる場合、どれくらいの木材をチャックしますか?
- If a wood chuck can chuck wood, how much wood do you chuck?
I don’t know… how much wood would you chuck?
English <-> Russian
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Сколько дров будет завалить, если дрочак сможет заправлять древесину?
- How much wood will it fill if the wok can fill the wood?
- Сколько древесины она заполнит, если вок сможет заполнить дерево?
- How much wood will it fill if the wok can fill the tree?
- Сколько дерева она заполнит, если вок сможет заполнить дерево?
- How much tree would she fill if the wok could fill the tree?
Sounds like one of Google’s interview questions.
English <-> Traditional Chinese
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- 如果一個木頭能扔木頭的話一個木頭會扔多少木頭
- How much wood would a wood throw if one could throw wood?
- 如果能扔木頭的話木頭會扔多少木頭
- How much wood would it throw out if we could throw it?
- 如果我們能扔掉的話會丟多少木頭
- How much wood would we lose if we could throw it away?
- 如果我們能把它扔掉我們會損失多少木頭
- How much wood would we lose if we could get rid of it?
- 如果能除掉它我們會損失多少木頭
- How much wood would we lose if we could get rid of it?
I think we’ve found the Spanish woodchuck businessman’s rival.
English <-> Italian
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Quanta legna manderebbe una marmotta se una marmotta potesse buttare legna?
- How much wood would a groundhog send if a groundhog could throw out wood?
- Quanto legna manderebbe una marmotta se una marmotta potesse buttare la legna?
- How much wood would a groundhog send if a groundhog could throw out the wood?
- Quanto legna manderebbe una marmotta se una marmotta potesse buttare via la legna?
- How much wood would a groundhog send if a groundhog could throw away the wood?
This one is interesting as there are a lot of very subtle changes before convergence.
English <-> Turkish
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Eğer bir dağ sıçanı odunları çöpe atabilseydi, bir dağ sıçanı ne kadar ağaç gönderirdi?
- If a groundhog could throw wood away, how many trees would a groundhog send?
- Eğer bir dağ sıçanı tahta atabilseydi, bir dağ sıçanı kaç ağaç gönderirdi?
- If a groundhog could throw a throne, how many trees would a groundhog send?
- Eğer bir dağ sıçanı tahtı atabilseydi, bir dağ sıçanı kaç ağaç gönderirdi?
- If a groundhog could throw the throne, how many trees would a groundhog send?
It is really bizarre to see how “wood” transitions into “throne” and “trees” in two different parts of the same question.
English <-> Czech
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Kolik dřeva by dřevorubec sklízl, kdyby dřevorubec mohl sklíčit dřevo?
- How much wood would a lumberjack harvest if a lumberjack could deceive the wood?
- Kolik dřeva by dřevorubec sklízel, kdyby dřevorubec mohl klamat dřevo?
- How much wood would a lumberjack harvest if a lumberjack could deceive wood?
Conclusion
I had fun playing around with Amazon Translate and seeing how the woodchuck tongue-twister degenerates when translated across different languages. I hope it was just as much fun for you to read this.
Please do not make any judgements about the accuracy of Amazon Translate based on this, for the following reasons:
- This is a very specific case and certainly doesn’t speak for the accuracy across entire languages.
- Translation isn’t easy. We’ve all heard of situations where things got “lost in translation”. Translation depends very much on context and linguistic differences. Hopefully the varying performance across languages is an illustration of this.
- Machine translation isn’t easy either. There’s a reason why it’s considered a field of artificial intelligence.